Yoo in Clear or Not So Fast?

World events are moving so fast and furious, one wonders how participants in the Saturday and Tuesday Chapman University School of Law debates featuring visiting professor and Bush White House torture enabler John Yoo at the center of each are keeping up with their talking points.

What a remarkably good day it has been forAlberto Gonzales, John Yoo,andJay Bybee(who is now, inexplicably, a federal judge). In the span
of just a few hours, those ignominious men and dozens more learned that
they would be spared from prosecution either here in the United States,
where they formulated our odious torture policies, or in Spain, where
or upon whose citizens those illegal policies were evidently practiced.
Somewhere, Dick Cheneyis smiling.

Cheney has the muscles and other facial infrastructure required to smile? Who knew?
First, Obama's Justice Department announced
it
would not just pass on prosecuting any Bush-era offenders but offer
those very same offenders indemnity from prosecution or even
Congressional investigation.

Cohen:

This means that former Bush officials will be given legal support
by the U.S. government if and when they are questioned about their role
in water-boarding and other tactics. Merry Christmas, John Yoo; you may
go down in history as one of the worst government lawyers ever but at
least you won't have to stand in the dock.

A few hours later, Spain's attorney general announced that
he, too, was not inclined to prosecute any former officials over
torture if the United States itself wasn't so inclined--a complete
about-face from reports of impending indictments against Yoo and the
rest of the so-called "Bush 6."

It is believed, but unconfirmed, the Obama administration exerted extreme
political and diplomatic pressure on Spain to back off. This, despite Justice just releasing
an August 2002 memo Yoo wrote concluding controversial interrogation
techniques the CIA wanted to employ against terror suspects--including
waterboarding and slapping--did not violate the federal statute
against torture. Bybee, then the assistant attorney general, signed off
on the memo.

As Yoo spends the spring as a visiting faculty member at
Chapman, critics are demanding that he face disbarment, criminal sanctions or the loss of his regular teaching
position at UC Berkeley's School
of Law at Boalt Hall. The memo's release no doubt intensifies such criticism, with some also reserving a special place in Hell for Bybee, who Dubya appointed to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, a.k.a. "activist" federal panel based in San Francisco.

Meanwhile, Scott Horton, a New York attorney specializing in international law and human rights and a legal affairs contributor to Harper's Magazine and a writer at The Daily Beast, told Amy Goodman this morning that Yoo may not be out of the woods yet when it comes to Spain. (See or hear Horton's Democracy Now! appearance here.)

In Spain, unlike the U.S., it is not up to prosecutors to choose
whether or not to investigate a potential crime, but the judge who
manages the case. In this instance, that's Baltasar Garzón, the investigative judge whose claim to fame was ordering the arrest of the former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet.
According to Horton, Spanish prosecutors also tried to stop the
Pinochet case from moving forward, something the crusading judge
ignored.

So maybe those talking points are still valid--heck,
with the released memo, even more valid. Then again, it's demoralizing that the
hopes for justice when it comes to U.S. torture hang with lone judge half
a world. No one expects a Spanish inquisition.